Immanence Vs Transcendence

As the structures of social theories continue to grow and other theories develop, one key underlying theme has aided in the creation of these theories. This theme is the opposing conflicts of transcendent and immanent thought.

The key issue of this essay is to give a clear and evaluated understanding of what both transcendent and immanent thoughts are, their differences and their main elements. This is to be done through reference to the three readings from the Socy 340 and its lecturer notes.

Transcendent and Immanent thought has guided many famous sociologists like Marx, Durkheim, Weber and Mead in the quest to understanding the social world we live in, investigate it, and represent it through research and theories. Transcendence, belief that 'God' or other divine forces control our world, and Immanence, belief in looking within; both have been represented by certain sections and people of our society. From transcendent thinker like religious groups and people who believe in 'fate' and 'Reason' to immanent thinkers like Atheists and even Charles Darwin best known for his discovery of 'Natural Selection', these two opposing yet equal thoughts have been present in social order and the social world.

When referring to transcendence within sociology, the first thought that comes to mind is God. Why god, because that is where the main element of transcendence is derived from. The idea that there is a higher and greater force outside of our own creation is the governing factor in transcendent thought.

When a transcendent thinker looks at the social world, they attempt to see patterns and links which are believed to be the guide to making the world and its social aspects all inter-related and therefore explainable. The explanation is often determined as God. God, in transcendent thinking, created the world, its social aspects and is the cause of all elements of being. Patterns and links are not seen as chance, but by conditioning from a divine spirit, whose power is greater than that of any in this life.

Within transcendence, features of its existence including solidarism and essence appear. These two elements combine to form key areas of investigation into transcendent thought. Solidarism, as described by Anderson's Social Philosophy, "purposes an ideal above the facts and dictating their arrangements 'for the best'". This guides solidarism towards transcendence by making the ideal a higher divine force and the dictation become the power it has to control the thoughts of its believers. This solidarism example is seen a monistic, as it believes in one divine rule, in comparison to the pluralistic view which guides interrelated groups, not one God.

Essence is the other major part of transcendent thought and a key element of understanding it. Essence is the innate, essential, unchanging form that all species of plants and animals are said to have. This idea of essence is guided by the idea that God gave everything an essence, and a key example is the story of Noah's Ark. In Noah's Ark we are told that Noah needs to collect to of each species of animal to keep the original set of creations made by God. This idea portrays that there are a fixed number of species in the world. It points to a force that created all life exactly as it is now. This also means that social interactions, ways of life, even learning all had to pre-exist when life first started.

Humans are believed to have a special essence, one which separates them from all of the species of plant and animal life.

"Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let then have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds in the air and over the cattle and over the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth".

This quote from the genesis section of the bible, presumes that humans are greater than anything else on earth, by God giving them authority over there dominion. Though God still has his authority over humankind, his authority is shared to humans, yet not to God's other creations. This authority and special essence is considered to be the 'soul' of a person and it's believed that animals and plant life do not share this same feature of life.

The opposing idea to the idea of transcendences is immanence. Immanence guides away from transcendence by looking inside the worlds working for understanding, rather than relating aspects of life to a God.

Immanence as defined by 'The Free Dictionary' is "existing or remaining within".

Its main feature is the element that things are not created by or from a higher, more divine force, but rather from time and our own self and society. Immanent thinkers believe that the social world is all there is and nothing else exist, no God or Reason to help make sense of life's different elements and aspects.

This idea of an evolving creation of life was best discovered by Charles Darwin in 1859.

Charles Darwin, a biologist and keen adventurer, was fascinated with answering key questions in relation to where species came from and how life came to be. Previous to his involvement in understanding species, the answer was that God created everything as it is and that no one species was related to any other type of species. For example, the relationship between apes, gorillas and humans was not seen as linked but as each different to the next. Darwin was determined to prove otherwise after examining work that his father had done in the field of biology. Darwin set about investigating by exploring different species of animal groups and trying to relate them to one another. His work took him round the world and in that time he started to notice links between differing species.

After many years of work, Darwin finally came to a conclusion, one which would not only push forward human understanding, but one which was going to shake the foundation of religion. Darwin was able to describe all species of flora and fauna through a process he called natural selection. Natural selection occurred when the environment in which a certain species had to survive changes and therefore the species must change as well. As changes occurred those